At 17-feet-long and 3,541 pounds, the great white shark Nukumi is a big fish, and she has steadily been making her way south from the Maine and Nova Scotia waters since October. Now, after spending some time near Cape Lookout, shes been spotted twice off the coast of the Cape Fear region. It’s hard to tell just what types of animals are swimming off the coast of the, but thanks to technology and the researchers at OCEARCH, we’re able to track the patterns and habits of just a few of them. ... read more

Luxury home sales in the Wilmington area shattered a 15-year-old record in 2020, outpacing the last high by 97 homes and nearly $190 million in closed sales volume.A total of 363 luxury properties sold during 2020 for $597 million in New Hanover, Brunswick and Pender counties, according to a report by Wilmington-based Just For Buyers Realty.The previous record was set in 2005, when 266 homes sold for a total of $409 million. Luxury homes in the report are defined as those costing $1 million or more.Several reasons ... read more

Gulfstream Restaurant, which expanded from their original Carolina Beach location to Wrightsville Beach in 2019, recently announced it faced some difficult decisions and said it would close that location and consolidating efforts on Pleasure Island at 78 Myrtle Ave.  Drift Coffee & Kitchen, meanwhile, said it will take over the Wrightsville Beach spot at 114 Causeway Dr. that was the longtime home of the Causeway Café.  Drift already has three local locations —... read more

Median home prices have grown more than average rents over the past year in 83 percent of counties, and they’ve risen more than wages in nearly two-thirds of the U.S. Still, owning a home is more affordable than renting in the majority of cases, a factor aided by consistently declining mortgage interest rates this past year. Attom’s report drew conclusions based on fair market rent data for 2021 from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, wage data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics an... read more

CAROLINA BEACH — Since July, a four-man crew of local commercial fisherman have switched their catch, resetting their lines on a different kind of haul: marine debris. Unlike their lifelong trade of harvesting shellfish, the crew has found stocks of marine debris are plentiful. After walking nearly all the marshes from Sneads Ferry to Zeke’s Island, the men have encountered a seemingly endless yield of abandoned marine and construction debris. Each storm and tide cycle churns up new debris for the ... read more